We are sitting at a white marble counter smooth as the inside of an oyster shell. The menu is an A5 piece of sand-coloured cardboard and we pick our way through it like shell collectors turning things over and marvelling at their ordinary loveliness. There will be nodding and smiling over the next couple of hours, even when the building alarm goes off. “No that’s my phone. It’s just a bit aggressive,” someone jokes as the wail presses in on our ears. It’s all okay. We are in our happy place. Even the bloke with the voice like a buzz saw who’s (over)sharing our counter is not coming close to kicking a dent in the bliss.
This is an outpost of one of my favourite restaurants in Dublin. We’re in the Fish Shop’s sister restaurant on Benburb Street, the Fish and Chip Shop. There are fish and chips in this bare high room. But there’s a lot more. It’s my second visit and the menu has expanded. Just a bit, and in just the right direction.
It’s a simple fit-out. All the walls, including the crumbly brick, are painted white and those gorgeous white marble counters, two of them parallel to each other run down the wall and the bar. No one has decanted the Sarsons malt vinegar into a label-free vintage shaker. The cutlery and paper napkins are in a jam jar and the minimalist mathematical Fish Shop logo (the greater than and less than symbols arranged as body and tail) is printed on cork coasters. The only flourish is a gilt mantle mirror behind the bar and burnished golden lampshades to soften down the whiteness.
All this casualness in a darkened stretch of a Cinderella city street could be mistaken for somewhere it’s easy to wander in and get fed. Don’t. This Saturday night, all the stools are taken by organised people in the know. Book now. Book often.
I have three plump sweet scallops served in the scallop shells we knew as pre-hipster ash trays.
Why? Well fish toasts firstly, at €4 and €4.50 a pop. If you got them in a Spanish tapas bar you’d be texting home to brag about a travel find. There’s a smoked mackerel, but it’s cold-smoked in Queen Street so instead of leather you get fudge-soft fish, just tickled with smoke rather than slam-dunked by a billowing bonfire. The subtlety is needed because there’s a horseradish mayonnaise that will Febreze your nasal cavities with a hot blast of fiery root. Three anchovy fillets are laid on hot Glenillen-slathered toast and then brushed with more butter so they go from mealy brown to mahogany slick, salty, buttery gorgeousness.
The oysters are tempura-ed, which feels right on a dark cold evening (the cold slither of raw oysters is a summer thrill). They’ve been cooked so lightly they are still deep-fried pockets of chewy ocean, finished with lime and chilli to spike up the batter.
Feeding frenzy
I have three plump sweet scallops served in the scallop shells we knew as pre-hipster ash trays. The aftermath of a short feeding frenzy on these plump babies glazed with umami-rich butter looks like pub ashtrays left out in the rain. There are puddles of silty brown butter with flecks of seaweed in each shell. Pretty it ain’t. Delicious it absolutely is and the perfect dip for golden chunky chips.
In a perfect world there'd be a strip of these where you could wander in, try a bite and a glass and wander on again
There’s the fish burger – china white hake in crisp beer batter smothered in a fennel, apple, mint and lime slaw that’s such a perfect partner to the fish it’s a burger whose last bite is as great as its first. We share a small knickerbocker glory glass full of chocolate mousse with a quennelle of salted caramel ice cream on top. The top of the mousse has gone a tiny bit rubbery in the fridge but all is forgiven when we get to the bottom of the glass to find a spoon of caramel, (butterscotch, my confectionary expert companion insists) at the bottom. It’s the chocolate in the bottom of the Cornetto – a perfect end to a truly sweet night.
Fish and Chip Shop feels like a world-class tapas bar plucked from the narrow streets of San Sebastián’s old town and dropped into a long-neglected part of Dublin’s north-inner city. In a perfect world there’d be a strip of these where you could wander in, try a bite and a glass and wander on again. Until that happens, we’ll give thanks for this place, Ireland’s best fish and chip shop, by a country mile.
The Fish and Chip Shop: 76 Benburb Street, Smithfield, Dublin 7 (01) 557 1473
Verdict: 8.5/10 The country's best fish and chips and plenty more besides
Facilities: fine
Wheelchair access: no
Food provenance: none
Music: nice
Vegetarian options: almost none. Chips with garlic mayo are it.
Dinner for two with a glass of wine, sparkling water and a shared dessert came to €68
Second helping . . .
Having cycled by several times without the time to drop in, I finally made it to Container Coffee on Dublin’s Thomas Street with a friend and was surprised by two things. Firstly, how cosy a container feels on a freezing day and secondly, they’ve got a great expanse of gravelled space out the back with pastel-painted picnic tables and a glorious view of the old smock tower that was once a distillery windmill. Look south for a handsomer view of Thomas Street at one remove from its constant traffic. The coffee is great too.
Container Coffee, 161 Thomas Street, Dublin 8
